


let lips do what hands do

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-04
Updated: 2008-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahead of them, John can hear Zelenka shouting, voice loud over the screech of strained metal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let lips do what hands do

**Author's Note:**

> A belated birthday gift for Aesc. Thanks to Trin for betaing.

Ahead of them, John can hear Zelenka shouting, voice loud over the screech of strained metal. The air stinks of ozone so strongly that John feels light-headed, but he keeps running, and Rodney is beside him—matching John pace for pace and beginning to outstrip him, feet pounding on the floor, tablet PC in one hand and Beretta in the other. Both are thrown to one side when they reach the lab, and John can see how Rodney's suddenly empty hands shake when he falls to his knees beside his sister.

John stumbles to a halt because Jeannie's there, she's alive, she's _breathing_, berating her brother and crying over him all at once and Rodney's not doing much better.

"Meredith," John can hear her say, "_Mer_," gasping as if she's as breathless as John feels, as if the heat of Atlantis' core had turned the air desert-dry in her lungs. One of them might be crying, and John is sure that when Rodney pulls Jeannie into a hug, he's muttering _lucky lucky lucky_ like it's the only mantra he's ever found with any meaning. John can't watch; has to turn away.

***

John radios back to the control room and lets them know everyone's okay after all. Woolsey's best efforts at command-crisp diction have barely faded in his ear before Keller and her team arrive in a whirl of gurneys and stethoscopes and dangerous-looking hypodermic needles. Jeannie's still all McKay piss-and-vinegar obstinacy, but her refusal to lie down on the gurney soon wilts in the face of Keller's wry determination and the look on Rodney's face.

Jeannie holds herself stiff and careful as she lies down—there's something off about the movement of her right leg that John knows, through painfully won experience, probably signals at least a couple weeks of physio—but though she doesn't complain about the pain, she all but sticks out her tongue when she sees Keller prepping the injection which should take away the worst of the after-effects.

"Baby," Rodney tells Jeannie when she winces, Keller sliding in the needle quickly and apologetically.

"You speak to the person who knows the story of your potty training exploits, Mer," Jeannie says, but her voice shakes as the drug takes hold. She reaches out to grasp Rodney's hand, and Rodney—with a grip John knows well, a clasp that has been a lifeline—Rodney holds on.

***

_Jeannie will be fine_, Keller tells them after a return to the infirmary and an anxious couple of minutes spent waiting for the Ancient diagnostic equipment to whirr and clank and produce a hologram of three long, straight yellow lines: _readings within normal parameters_. Jeannie turned out to be better than fine: back to gossiping with Teyla in a couple of hours, the brace on her leg the only visible sign of trauma; the two of them swapping stories about their men over brimming cups of Athosian stout tea, the sharpening edges of their smiles turning John and Ronon and Rodney pale.

"Great," Rodney huffs as they bus their trays after lunch, "Just what my life was in need of—more potentially lethal ammunition in the hands of someone with every possible reason to resent me. I cannot believe she told Jeannie about the thing with Katie and the _rodneyana villosa_; you just know that the next time I'm back on Earth, I'm going to log onto the MIT alumni message board and find it's sprouted a cactus theme."

"Sure," John says absently, watching Rodney's hands as they dispose of the remains of a plate of rather rubbery lasagne—the flicking fingers, the quick thumbs—thinking of how this morning, Rodney had used them to gather his sister to him as if the mere curves of his palms could hold safe life, breath, affection, the trembling rhythm of two still-uncertain hearts.

"You wanna get together to play Wii later on?" Rodney asks just before they part ways at the door. "I finally managed to get it to talk with the Ancient display screens. Mario Kart, larger than life, and I'm pretty sure the bigger it is, the more the fun. So to speak." His eyes are bright blue and guileless.

John makes a show of chewing on his lower lip and considering. "Not playing as Princess Peach this time, McKay," he says, and tries not to laugh when Rodney rolls his eyes.

"You can deny it all you want," Rodney scoffs, "but your fixation on her is really kind of disturbing."

John punches him lightly on the shoulder; and later, when Rodney is flushed and obnoxious with victory, trash-talking John with fluency and verve while running his player off the road, John finds himself rubbing his thumb over and over against the evening-dark stubble on his jaw: rough talisman against his need to reach.

***

Patrick Sheppard was a man's man of the old school. No six packs of beer or wide screen TVs or cowboy-booted swagger for him; his was a display of a different sort. Handshakes that were more a show of dominance than a greeting; a slap on the shoulder for punctuation; a roar of a laugh close kin enough to John's own that no one could have doubted they were related, even if the muted green of their eyes, their way of standing, hadn't been the same.

When John and David trotted downstairs dutifully after dinner, putting in half an hour at parties full of the smell of cigar smoke and expensive perfume, Patrick would wrap an arm around their shoulders and present them to all and sundry: _These are my boys. Look just like their mother, don't they?_ Dave's smile was always fixed, and John could never even manage that much: couldn't stand being told how big he'd grown; couldn't wait to wipe waxy, aunt-bestowed lipstick from his cheek.

Patrick Sheppard could use touch to hide, or display, or deflect—he too often used it to show too much—and on the day his hands shook at the thought of touching his son, John had turned on his heel and never gone back.

***

Keller and Terje—the tall, thin, red-haired Norwegian physiotherapist who's usually so taciturn he makes Ronon look like a chatterbox—take care of Jeannie's most immediate health problems over the next few days, but all the lingering issues, the long term stretch and mend of ligaments strained past their strength, will have to be taken care of back on Earth.

"Plus," Jeannie tells Woolsey while she's badgering him to sign off on the small mound of paperwork that's necessary to certify her Ancient brain-influence-free and ready to return to the Milk Way, "Madison is back to school on Monday, and I haven't even bought her her first geometry set yet."

This gets her a horrified yelp from Rodney, and she has to rush to reassure him that she meant Madison's first _proper_ geometry set, the little plastic things don't count; Rodney favours her with the McKay-patented mixture of encouragement, overbearing arrogance, and recommendations for quality protractor producers all the way to the 'gate, and John would feel the need to smack him down a little bit if Jeannie weren't more than capable of keeping her own end up.

While Chuck dials the 'gate, Rodney and Jeannie stand a little outside of the splash area, both of them turned suddenly awkward against the need to say good-bye, the need to acknowledge, however tacitly, that they are family who will be separated by a stretch of stars for another length of time that passes their knowing.

"So, uh," Rodney says, "tell Kaleb and Madison hi. Or whatever you think I should say. Would say, I mean, because obviously I'm not given necessarily to the saying of nice... things." John thinks he looks as if he's about one syllable away from scuffling his feet on the floor, or casting his eyes up to heaven at his own verbal incompetence, or even finding the nearest hapless lab tech and yelling at him or her to relieve the burden of emotion on a tongue unused to voicing it.

"Mer," Jeannie says, tone part fondness, part little-sister and grown-mother, "You're _such_ a doofus." She reaches up to hug him while the wormhole bursts into life, collapses back under the weight of its own energy, and Rodney's hands come up to rest tentatively on the strong line of her back, the vibrant mass of her hair.

One last smile for them all—Keller and Woolsey and Ronon, Teyla and Chuck and John—and Jeannie hobbles away on her crutches towards the 'gate, one of the Marines pushing her luggage through ahead of her. "Come see us for Thanksgiving," she yells over her shoulder at Rodney. "No excuses."

Rodney squints at her. "Canadian or American?"

Jeannie rolls her eyes. "Canadian, duh. I'll save some tofurkey for you." She's gone through the 'gate before Rodney can do more than squawk in outrage.

The wormhole shivers and dies, leaving behind only the sharp, familiar, ozone smell. Everyone drifts away—back to duties and rest and play, the quiet hum of routine—but Rodney stays and watches the gate's empty curve for quite some time. John hangs back, in the shaded space beneath the balcony, and watches Rodney: remembers how tightly Rodney had held onto Jeannie's hand, thinks of all the things you're not supposed to see, and how sometimes you're meant to, anyway.

***

In all the years since they stopped being the Sheppard boys and joined the ranks of the Sheppard men, Dave's hugged John just once, in the aftermath of their father's funeral. It was drizzling, a soft rain that blurred sky and earth into a companionable whole, and right before John jogged the couple of steps between the front door and the waiting taxi, Dave had set his jaw and pulled John into a brief, one-armed hug. Unexpected: and John had time only to blink and catch Dave's almost antiseptic smell of good soap and expensive after-shave before it was over.

John's still not sure what Dave had meant by that—what he'd hoped to accomplish—because he'd said, "Well. Fly safe," when John pulled away, and there was nothing in either gesture that made John want to say more than, "Thanks," and turn away.

John remembers this, lying on the small, flat bed in his small, quiet quarters: thinks that Teyla's shown more willingness to touch him, that Ronon's always been the one to show him a brother's firm affection, that Rodney and Jeannie never hesitated, not for the things that counted. Realises that Rodney's never hugged him, that he's never hugged Rodney, and feels his jaw click tight. Some things you shouldn't hesitate over, and he swings his feet onto the floor.

***

Not in the labs, or the mess hall, or his quarters, or the gate room. In the end, John runs Rodney to earth on a balcony that juts out from the middle tower, small screwdriver in hand while he fine-tunes the engine in the toy racing car that is his current pet project. Rodney'd sworn it was for Torren to use when he got a little older, though John wasn't sure what Teyla would have to say to the prospect of her toddler son driving a naqadah-enhanced toy around the city.

Rodney squints over at him when John sits down, but when John does nothing more than fidget and stick his hands into his pockets and pull them back out again, Rodney just _hmpfhs_ and returns to his task, telling John to pass him the soldering iron. John hands it over and watches Rodney for a while, the slanting light of the afternoon sun still strong enough for Rodney to work with precision.

"So, uh," John ventures in a brilliant conversational opener, "Jeannie looked... well."

"Uh huh," Rodney says absently, attention caught by one last tricky wire. The tip of his tongue pokes at the corner of his mouth.

"You gonna get some dinner in a bit?" John tries again, after a moment, and tries his best not to wince at the way his voice trails off, high and uncertain, at the end. It's uncomfortably like being sixteen again, back in high school, crashing and burning, as is the way Rodney's looking at him: like he can see too much, and there's no way John can hold himself so that Rodney _can't._

So John steels himself: takes a deep breath, reaches out, and plucks the car and the soldering iron and the screwdriver from Rodney's oddly lax hands and sets them on the ground. Rodney tilts his head, and looks at John, but doesn't say anything, which is so far off the baseline of Rodney-normal that it all but freaks John out, makes the blood skitter in his veins and his palms itch and his ribs creak with holding back and he knows—he wants—he thinks Rodney can see too much anyway, but John's been lost since he watched Rodney sag to the floor and let himself think about the quality of affection. Rodney sees too much, and John's beyond caring—closes his eyes and lets goes of his breath and kisses Rodney anyway. Rodney's lips are surprisingly cool against his, the curl of his tongue unexpectedly sly, and John braces himself with one hand against the balcony floor, leans in.

When Rodney pulls back, his pupils are blown wide and the crook of his mouth means happiness; _finally_, is all he says, as if it was only ever that simple. _I was—I was watching_, John manages, _I saw_, and if that's not intelligible, it must be comprehensible to Rodney. _Idiot_, Rodney tells him, _you never had to wait_, and John reaches for him first, fits his arms around the strong lines of him, and lets Rodney hold him up.


End file.
